


Sound of Silence

by Quillinky



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: Gen, Phase One (Gorillaz), Supernatural Elements, Survival Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:00:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26017699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillinky/pseuds/Quillinky
Summary: 2D wakes up to a day like no other. When he finds his bandmates missing in irregular, suspicious circumstances, he assumes the worst. He has to make like one of the protagonist's from his much-loved horror flicks and adapt to survive. He'd seen enough of them in his life to know how to keep himself alive... right? [Phase 1]
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I like elements of horror and I also like Gorillaz. Wanted to incorporate both!
> 
> There is swearing, adult themes and depictions of blood and gore throughout, hence the high rating. If you think I need to add any more warnings, let me know! But otherwise, I hope you enjoy!

2D ran his fingers along the wet red smear that stained the wall nearest to him, breath hitched in his throat, some primal, visceral fear in him screaming at him to hightail it out of there. He grimaced as he looked at the congealed sticky mess that coated his fingertips. Bright red liquid trickled thinly down the length of his hand, pooling into the creases of his palm.

_Leave leave leaveleaveleaveleaveleave._

But 2D couldn’t will his feet to move. The lobby was in a dire state. One section of the room seemed to have fared a little better than the other, but the side that was bad… it was real big murder-scene bad. 

Bloody blotches dirtied the dank, brown walls, sprayed and splattered and streaked across the doorways, the concrete floor, the furniture… like some sort of artwork you might see from Jackson Pollock, only on a larger scale, more violent and more grotesque. A puddle of blood lay on the ground underneath the great big smear 2D had touched a only moment earlier, a messy trail leading away from it towards the broken lobby doors, as if something - or someone, 2D quickly realised, with surge of dread - had been dragged from it.

The smell - oh man, the _stench_ \- clung to the inside of his nostrils. The trepidation was churning his insides to mush. It made him want to retch. 

What the fuck. What the fuck was he supposed to do now? How had he wound up here, in this situation?

Stupid Murdoc, and his stupid, sodding haunted old studio in the middle of nowhere, that reeked of sulphur and decay and artificial air freshener.

He should of realised what he was letting himself in for when he found out how little Murdoc had bought the property for, or when he saw the massive graveyard in the grounds for the first time. Alarm bells should have been ringing in his head then! He hadn’t even questioned when the bright sunshine and lush fields of the outskirts had quickly and inexplicably given way to dreary rainclouds and bare dirt as soon as they passed through Kong Studios’ gates.

He should have bloody known that following after him like some lost, aimless kid would bring him nothing but trouble. Foresight had never had been his strong suit though. He _had_ followed Murdoc, and here he was now. He was annoyed that he had no one else to blame for that fact but himself.

So swayed by Murdoc’s initial attentiveness in nurturing his ability to sing and play keys, and the insistence that it would earn him everything he ever wanted, the prospect of a new, exciting, independent life away from his parents had been enticing enough for him to uproot his life out of Crawley.

He had liked the set-up Kong had for the first few weeks after they had moved in, thought it was wicked you could buy a place with it’s own real-life zombie hoard, even if he was a little freaked out by them. Even Murdoc was spooked the very first time he’d seen them roaming the grounds, though he’d never admit it. But then there was the scratching at the front doors at night, and the distant banging on walls at stupid hours in the morning. The shadows that would shift in the periphery of his vision, the whisperings that would carry from empty rooms. The sounds - these inhuman sounds - that would sometimes rumble right up from the depths of the basement... it all got underneath his skin eventually. And now there was this.

2D fought back the compulsion to throw up, swallowing back down the bile that was rising up his throat. His head was swimming, getting dizzy with thoughts about what he was supposed to do, what he _should_ be doing, if he should have picked up something was seriously wrong much earlier. Whether he should run for hills or stay and try to find his bandmates.

Should do, would do, could do. White fear clouded most of his more coherent streams of thought.

He squeezed his eyes shut to try and quell the queasiness, then promptly snapped them back open again - he didn’t want to give whatever caused _this_ a chance to sneak up on him.

He scanned the lobby, moving his head as little as possible. It was still quiet. Not a single flicker of movement. The sound of silence was only thing he could hear, apart from the pounding of his own heartbeat in his ears. 2D chewed hard at his bottom lip - he didn’t know if he should take the silence as a good or a bad sign.

Nothing seemed real. Time didn’t feel like it existed. There was so much blood that it was obscene, an onslaught on his senses. Everything felt fake, the setting staged, the situation fabricated.

It felt like he was living in a horror film.

*

It was early evening when 2D had surfaced from his room - the outside door to the car park was partially open, the grey dismal daylight filtering in from underneath it dimmer than the bright overhead striplights inside - with the intention of heading for the kitchen to grab some snacks for a movie marathon. Murdoc was sat on the bottom stair of the Winnebago, shirtless, thumbing the neck of a half empty brown bottle that lay on the ground between his feet. He cocked his head up at the sound of 2D’s footsteps.

“Faceache.”

2D wouldn’t have even needed to see him to know that he was sloshed. The slur in Murdoc’s given nickname for him, the fact he couldn’t even say it with any clear coherency. 2D turned to look in his direction.

His eyes were heavily lidded, the bags underneath them dark and purple. He couldn’t smell him from where he was stood by his bedroom door, but he could imagine that he whiffed considerably of booze. He looked like shit, like he’d been pulled through a hedge backwards. Multiple times. 

“Alright Muds?” 2D asked.

Murdoc fixed his eyes on him. “Peachy.” He replied. He took a swig of whatever he was drinking and stood up, swaying slightly forward on his feet. He gripped the frame of the Winnebago door with one hand to steady himself.

2D vaguely wondered if he had ever really seen Murdoc in a state of sobriety before, in the short time he had come to know him. The odd time, occasionally... maybe, he mused. It was hard to say because it was difficult to tell. The moments that 2D was certain that he might be sober, he’d end up seeing him sipping from a hip flask he’d retrieved from somewhere, or catch a whiff of alcohol in passing, and 2D began to suspect that he drank because he actually functioned worse without it.

It was sad, really. It was a rare day, as a band, that they had all reserved for some downtime after a few intense weeks, and Murdoc had chosen to spend it alone, devoted to drinking himself into a stupor, because it was all he had even known him to do when he had time to kill.

2D had felt sympathy for him in the beginning. Wanted to know why he shut himself away and lived the way he did, because he knew from his own dependency on painkillers, that only people who had been damaged by the world turned to vices to cope with life. But he was a complicated man to work out. He was closed-up and confrontational. Too controlling, and too cagey about his past, his family, his emotions, and with anyone who tried to make any sort of meaningful connection with him.

It also didn’t take him long to realise just how volatile Murdoc could really be. The encouraging comments and elevating compliments about 2D’s talents and good looks that had seen him through the early days began to twist into acid-tongued outbursts, where he’d jibe, and insult, and lash out to the point where 2D felt like it couldn’t hack it anymore and would angrily assert he was leaving to go back home, only for Murdoc to change tone and reign him back in with sweet words, building him back up again like they were the best of friends all along.

He confused him. And his unpredictable nature soon chipped away at 2D, stamping out any feeling of concern or understanding that he may have once harboured for him.

“Oi, mate,” Murdoc said, knocking 2D out of his thoughts. A lazy smirk creeped up to the corner of his lips. “Fancy going down the pub?”

“Urm…”

It’d been ages that he and Murdoc had gone on a night out. They’d pretty much been a nightly ritual back when the band was just the two of them, sharing limited space together in the Winnie near up near Stoke. That’d been a strange time in his life... they’d had too much time and too little money - 2D only had his meagre savings from working at Norm’s, and the periodic welfare allowances his Mum would send him, Murdoc had whatever he earned from shady deals with strangers, flogging off what little gear he had managed to swipe from his Uncle’s shop - but what they did have was banked for two main objectives - the purchase of cheap, permanent studio space and partying.

They were always pretty fun nights, as far as he could remember… he’d usually end up losing Murdoc in the crowd at some point during the night, but would quickly find company in the form of a pretty little thing, who would compliment him and play with his hair, lace their fingers with his and try and pull him into the cloakroom for a snog.

There hadn’t really been much time for any of that since they’d moved to Essex. He’d ended up reconnecting with Paula. They’d brought her into the fold as a guitarist, as well as Russel who became their drummer, and work on the band and their sound became the primary focus.

Then there was the incident in the toilets with Murdoc and Paula, and that was almost the band’s breaking point. It would have been the end of everything if Noodle hadn’t sprang onto the scene to fill the void and establish some sort of collective unity.

Well, kind off.

Murdoc was still an arsehole. And 2D was less than enamoured with the thought of spending any more quality time with the bassist than he had to.

“C’mon, mate. Maaaate,” Murdoc cooed. He staggered a few uneasy steps towards him, and thumped a forceful hand against his shoulder once he was within reaching distance. “A few pints, yeah? Then maybe a club afterwards, a little back alley drinking den... just like old times. We could find a few nice birds, get a sweat on. It’s been a long time since we just let off some steeeam.”

2D felt the twitch of Murdoc’s fingers digging into his shoulder, applying varying degrees of pressure into his skin. Now that he was closer, 2D could see just how restless Murdoc’s movements actually were - he was fidgeting on the balls of his feet, sweat caking his face; the smell of which mingled with the alcohol on his breath. His pupils were dilated, the whites of his eyes bloodshot. There was more than just booze in his system.

“Nah, thanks.” 2D said.

Murdoc stared at him. A pause. His fingers squeezed a little tighter into his shoulder. “No?”

No, I don’t want to spend an evening of my free time with a high, smelly, Satanic old rot, who takes and does what he wants for his own selfish reasons without any regard for anyone else, piss off. That was what 2D really wanted to say. 

What he said instead was, “Yeah… nah. See, I’ve actually got some films I’ve been meaning to watch and tonight’s the only real sort of time I’ve got to watch ‘em.”

Well, he wasn’t lying.

“One’s a re-mastered copy of this slasher flick from the 60‘s. Proper freaky one, it was. Was straight-to-video and banned in several countries for years for being too gory and offensive, and-”

“Whatever, do what you like.” Murdoc interrupted, his face souring, the pally tone of his voice only moments before dropped and discarded. “I don’t really care about any of that tosh.”

He called 2D boring and frigid, and grumbled his way back to the confines of his Winnebago, glugging from his bottle. He stumbled around out of sight for a minute or two before emerging again with a shirt and his Cuban heels on, and a set of car keys dangling from his hand. 

“Uh… I don’t think you should drive when you’re tanked, Murdoc.” 2D advised him, as he watched him climb into the driver’s seat of the Geep. 

Murdoc flipped him the middle finger, kick-started the engine, and drove off out of car park with a dramatic screech of the tyres.

2D looked at the empty space where the Geep was once parked only seconds earlier, listening to the roar of the engine grow more distant, and after some deliberation, decided that it was probably best that he didn’t inform Russel that he had just witnessed their bassist drive off, drunk and off his face, in the vehicle that he had so carefully and painstakingly built. Not because it was within Murdoc’s best interest, but because 2D knew that Murdoc would _know_ that it was him that tattled if he found himself on the receiving end of Russel’s frustration on his return back. He couldn’t be arsed with that.

2D let the whole thing slide from his mind as he progressed onwards to the kitchen to raid it for snacks. Descending back down to his bedroom, arms laden with big bags of crisps and a bottle of pop, he settled himself comfortably into bed for the night with the lights down low and the brightness and volume of the telly dialled right up.

He only made it through one of the films he had planned to watch that night, dozing off before the end credits started rolling.


	2. Chapter 2

2D woke up naturally in the pitch blackness of his room, dazed and still half-asleep. 

He rolled onto his side and fumbled around in the dark for his alarm clock by his bedside and brought it up close to his face to read the flashing neon numbers, but was met with only a black, blank display. He bashed it against the side of bed in an effort to try and bring some life back to it. When that proved useless, he unceremoniously dropped it back down where he found it.

Yawning, he hauled himself up out of bed, knocking off some packets of crisps that he’d left strewn on his bed to the floor. He brushed his fingers through his hair to tease out any tangles from the ends and rubbed at his eyes, before rifling through a small pile of crumpled clothes that lay dumped by the side of his bed. He picked up the first shirt and pair of jeans he laid his hands on, sniffed them to see if they were clean, and dressed in the dark.

He ascended the stairs up to the ground floor, the rumbling in his tummy fuelling thoughts of breakfast, the niggling crave of nicotine reminding him of his need for a smoke, where he came to find the car park silent and shrouded in darkness.

2D stopped short at the threshold of the stairwell door, and looked out into the dark open space. 

This was… unexpected.

2D had never really known the lights in the car park to ever go out. At least, he’d never _seen_ them go out.

He locked onto a single, solitary emergency light nearby that remained lit, like a glowing orb shining out of the shadows, casting minimal white light upon the exit door that connected the car park to the main studio building, marginally reflecting off the metal alloys and dusty windows of the darkened Winnebago that was parked only a few metres away.

The car park felt different in the dark. Enveloped in light, the car park was... well, just that; a large flat lot for the few working vehicles they owned, and the scrap metal husks of cars and machinery that had been left behind by the owners before them. In the dark…

2D felt a sudden chill run through him and he shivered a little, rubbing at the goose bumps that had prickled up and down his bare arms. He felt wide awake now, his awareness of his surroundings heightened. He never did like the dark all that much. The only place he did not feel threatened by it was in his bedroom, which was small and contained, with all his creature comforts, and four thick walls to protect him. It was a very different story, out here, in the open.

The darkness seemed oppressive and unnerving. He could not see past beyond the Winnebago, out into the empty, pitch-blackness behind it, and 2D couldn’t stop himself from contemplating what might be lurking within in it just out of sight, unknown and obscured. He might already be being watched, right now.

His palms started going clammy and he flexed his fingers, before rubbing them against the denim of his jeans. To keep his hands busy. Because he _needed_ to keep them occupied. It was a means of instilling some reassurance and to stay grounded. To not let his anxiety run away with him and overtake his senses.

It wasn’t working.

2D had seen enough horror movies to know that nothing ever good came out of the darkness, especially in this god awful place. 

He cast his gaze to the emergency light and the exit directly below it, his eyes flitting between his dark surroundings and the guiding light, and promptly decided he didn’t want to stick around any longer than he had to. In a few long, quick strides, he followed the light to the door and slipped out into the safety of the main building, quickly shutting it behind him without a second glance.

It was only marginally lighter in the hallway, the daylight filtering in from some of the windows in the adjoining rooms, but it was brighter than the car park all the same. 2D felt the tension loose from his shoulders and he allowed himself to lean back against the closed door, a sense of relief filling him. Light was safe. Light washed away the irrationality of his fears that stemmed from the darkness. 

2D took a few moments to calm himself, and once his balance of mind felt restored, he padded his way across the hallway to the kitchen and popped on the switch for the kettle. He hummed a little ditty as he waited for the water to boil, staring out across the filthy, stinking landfill that was their view from the kitchen window, and waited. And waited. And waited.

He glanced at the kettle, brow furrowed. The water should’ve been boiling by now.

He waved his hand above the spout. No steam. Tentatively touched the side of kettle. Cold. His eyes trailed up to where the lead connected to the socket. Plugged in. 2D flicked the switch on and off again for good measure, and tried again. Nothing.

Dodgy wire. Cheap dodgy kettle.

With the notion of tea or coffee out the window, 2D had a hankering for the next best thing - a cigarette. 

Not really feeling the effort that was required of him to retrieve his own fags from his bedroom - he’d didn’t necessarily want to venture back out into the gloomy car park to get there too, if he was being honest - 2D poked around the kitchen to see if there was any of Murdoc’s about that he could nick instead.

It was always a bit of a risk dipping into one of the many fag stashes Murdoc had dotted around the gaff without him knowing, but 2D never made a habit of taking too many all at once. Just one or two smokes. Not enough for Murdoc to take notice, anyway. All he had to do was make sure he didn’t get caught doing it.

He usually kept a pack in the kitchen, in the corner of some musty old drawer, or maybe a crumby top shelf in one of the cupboards, but for all his efforts, all he managed to find was a squashed, empty carton of Lucky Lungs next to a dirty ashtray on the table, the remaining cigarettes from the packet presumably the now burnt out stubs left squished into the centre.

2D sighed at the inconvenience of it all, lumping himself down into one of the dining chairs. He was out of luck; no tea, no smoke.

He leant back into the chair, balancing on the two back legs of his chair to entertain himself, gripping the underside of the table so that he wasn’t in any danger of toppling over. He lingered there for a moment or two, taking in the view of the kitchen. It was still, quiet, and not as clean as it should be with a kid in the house, with Murdoc’s weird demonic ritual shit taking up room where food should be. Standard then, really.

Except he’d never known the studios to be so... well, quiet.

A faint, but sudden, bout of unease caught him unawares. 2D frowned.

Something was off but he couldn’t place what. It was the same feeling he experienced in the car park, with the darkness triggering a niggling nervousness that gnawed at his insides.

2D slowly brought his chair down to the floor again, and scanned the kitchen a little more thoroughly from his seat.

_Tick, tock._

There was nothing too untoward that he could see that would’ve sparked such an uncomfortable reaction. Nothing misplaced or missing. 

_Tick, tock, tick, tock._

2D twisted around to read the old clock stuck on the wall above the fridge behind him. The hands on the clock indicated that it had just gone noon. He remarked to himself, how bloody loud the clock was today. Wouldn’t surprise him if it was a dodgy clock like every other appliance in this gaff.

Then it struck him. And he couldn’t believe how oblivious he was to it before.

The clock sounded so loud because there was no other noise to be heard that would usually muffle it. No noise; from inside or outside the studio. Anywhere. With that realisation, 2D’s stomach tightened.

He suddenly became hyper-aware of the sound of the his own slightly quickening breath and the mild ring of tinnitus in his ears intermingled with the tick tock of the clock. It was the most annoying thing he’d ever heard. He jabbed a skinny finger into his ear and rubbed at it to distract himself from the rising apprehension that was beginning overwhelm him.

How had he not _noticed_?

Kong was only a building but it was... alive, in a way. A pulsating energy flowed through the place, and it could be a hive of activity - from the living and supernatural inhabitants alike. Whether it was Murdoc blaring heavy metal from his Winnebago, Noodle bouncing off of the corridor walls or Russ hammering out some new project or other. He couldn’t even hear the squawking and screeching of the ruddy crows that habitually circled the landfill and studio overhead, a familiar background noise he had come to associate with Kong and all of it’s dirty, grimy qualities. There was always... something.

Now there was nothing. And it was nearly midday, so surely Russel and Noodle would’ve been up and about by now. There weren’t even any dirty pots left behind in the sink from breakfast.

2D, after a short internal battle with his own indecision and still not feeling entirely confident about his choice, made the decision to search out his band mates himself, where he was sure he would find them in some far room - maybe - with some reasonable explanation as to why the studio had fallen silent - hopefully - and 2D would realise he was being a prat, and he could quash this ridiculous sense of creeping foreboding that was burrowing into him.

2D poked his head out into the hallway. It was quiet. Eerily silent. He couldn’t hear, nor see or sense anything.

He scrunched up his eyes and concentrated, focusing his attention on just listening.

No tinny voices echoing from a telly or radio, or muffled conversations from behind closed doors in nearby rooms. No muted twang of a guitar, or deep thrum of bass, or thump of a drum vibrating through the walls, no crackly amp feedback. No movement, or footsteps, or bumps against a wall or scrapes along a floor; anything that suggested that any of his band mates were mucking around above, below, in the far corners or even next to him. It was unsettling. It… it reminded him of the scenes that would always occur in zombie movies; the lapse in action, the quiet breather right before all hell broke loose.

A nervous chuckle burst out of 2D. Best not think about that, he consoled himself, and with a deep inward breath, went to go and seek out his band mates.

“Noodle?” he asked after her, looking in the lounge and recording studio, as well as the rooms in-between, before ascending to the first floor to see if she was in her bedroom. Her door was wide open, and he peered inside to find her radio helmet still by her bedside, blankets tossed aside and strewn across her unmade futon. 

“Russel?” he called out, checking his bedroom first as it was right next to Noodle’s, then peeking into the cinema and anywhere else he could think to find him. It was only on his way back down to the ground floor that he discovered one of Russel’s caps slung on the handle of an open utility cupboard door, the fuse box exposed inside, but with no sign of the drummer in sight.

“Murdoc?” he began to shout a little more alarmed now, swinging open the doors to the nearby toilets, checking each cubicle. When that provoked no response, and with the realisation that he had no other rooms left to look, he turned to the last place he hadn’t yet explored and had actively been avoiding until it was his final option. 

He dithered outside the main door to the car park, twiddling his fingers together, not keen at all on the idea of venturing back out into the dark, but with no Russ or Noodle around and his search for them doing nothing to alleviate the horrible, paranoid fear coursing through him, he had an almost desperate need to know if Murdoc had made it back from whatever pit he’d fallen into the night before.

The image of the blackened, curtain-drawn windows of the Winnebago flashed in 2D’s mind from when he had passed it by earlier. He did risk a kick up the arse by a terribly hungover Murdoc for daring to step into his domain, but it was one he had to take, if only to relieve his own anxiety.

After a few moments of building himself up in the hall, he eventually mustered up the courage to enter the car park and reach the Winnebago door. He reluctantly knocked and was momentarily taken aback when the door moved inwards with the first push, noticing that it was off the latch and slightly ajar.

He glanced over his shoulder towards the studio door - which he had purposefully left open for a fraction of light to spill through for some degree of visibility - and cautiously pulled open the door. He had only managed to get one foot forward into the musty sitting area, when his vision was immediately drawn to a tiny, dull orange glow in the darkness on the floor before him. It was a lit cigarette, still burning. Quite possibly searing a hole into the lino it had been dropped on, but, hey, what was one more cigarette burn in Murdoc’s giant ashtray on wheels?

2D stepped a little further into the Winnebago and bent down to pick it up. He brought it up close to his face to inspect it, turning towards the faint light from the main building to aid him. It looked pretty fresh. Murdoc had been here recently.

“Murdoc?” 2D tentatively called out, in a half whisper. No answer. He tried again, slighter louder. He was greeted with only silence.

Well, waste not want not, 2D thought to himself, jamming the cigarette between his lips. But a familiar smell across the top of his knuckles, that stirred up reminiscences of childhood nosebleeds, past car collisions and split lips, prompted him to pull his hand back from his face and examine it. It proved to be a difficult task with barely any light available to him.

His hand wasn’t hurting... or at least he didn’t think he’d done anything to it, 2D tried to assess, squinting at his hand.

He vacated the Winnebago and quickly walked back towards the main building, taking deep drags of the cigarette, blowing them out as he went. It did take the edge off the anxiety pinching at his nerves, but he would still glance left and right and just over his shoulder to make sure nothing was creeping on him.

As he entered the doorway and back through to the hallway, now in the light again, he inspected his hand. His face and stomach dropped. He almost lost the fag out of his mouth.

Coppery smudges tinged most of the back of his hand as well as the inside of his palm between his thumb and index finger, lining into the folds and dips of his skin. He twisted his hand back and forth to take in what he was seeing, staring wide eyed at the blood staining his fingers and knuckles.

2D assured himself, maybe a little too forcefully - _blood on the door, blood on the floor? What and where did he touch??_ \- that there was a reasonable explanation for this. Murdoc had gotten into a fight or accident or something, left his blood everywhere because he was the mankiest man he’d ever met. _Maybe he should have searched through the Winnebago a bit more thoroughly? ___

____

____

He’d almost - bravely - considered trying to locate a torch and shining it into the car park - from the safety of the studio doorway - in case there was the chance that Murdoc may have blacked out on the concrete floor of the car park, invisible in the dark, when a sound - the tiniest sound, quiet enough that in usual circumstances where the studio wasn’t as silent as the grave, 2D doubted he would have even heard it at all - like a shard of glass shattering carried from the far end of the hallway, towards the lobby.

2D whipped his head up to the noise. The rising beat of his heart was thudding in his ears now. The door was partly open, the lobby behind shrouded in dim light.

“Murdoc?” He squeaked, piercing the thick silence that followed.

Nothing.

He tiptoed towards the lobby, every step forward tentative and measured so as not to risk making any loud or sudden movements. He tried to keep an ear out for any more noises and kept his eyes peeled for any abrupt movement, but it was proving difficult to focus on anything when there was blind panic welling up in his chest. 

“Russel?”

He was beginning to feel faint. He kept repeating his bandmates names, hoping in turn they would answer back. A response never came.

“Noodle?”

He thought he might actually pass out when he reached the door, his stomach performing somersaults. He stood there, for what felt like a lifetime, his hand hovering over the door handle.

He really, _really_ did not want to go into the lobby. All of his instincts, his mind and his body and his spirit, were willing him to get far away, back down the corridor, down the stairs to the safety of his room.

But no one else was around to investigate the noise for him. And cowering underneath his bed covers did nothing for anyone. He knew he wasn’t going to like what he might find on the other side of the door.

He breathed deeply as he twiddled the cigarette between his fingers, staring unblinking at the door handle, his other hand still hovering over it. He made up his mind. 

He took one last, long draw of the cigarette and stubbed it out on the old, brittle peeling doorframe before taking a step back, putting just enough space between him and the door. He nudged it open with his foot. A series of scenarios played out in his head as the door slowly swung open as to what he might find behind it. He hated all of them.

It was the stench that hit him first. The same tacky smell from earlier, only stronger, more sickly and more nauseating than before.

He took another deep breath, and stepped through the doorway.


End file.
